


open and shut

by leftshoelace



Category: The Librarians (TV 2014)
Genre: Angst, Angst and Romance, Angst with a Happy Ending, Boys In Love, Emotional Baggage, Established Relationship, Ezekiel Jones Backstory, Ezekiel Jones has Issues, Idiots in Love, Jacob 'Jake' Stone is a Good Boyfriend, Lack of Communication, M/M, Men Crying, Miscommunication, Relationship Issues, Sad with a Happy Ending, Trust Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-09
Updated: 2020-04-09
Packaged: 2021-02-28 23:08:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,890
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23405035
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leftshoelace/pseuds/leftshoelace
Summary: Ezekiel opens up to Stone about why he never stays in relationships for long
Relationships: Ezekiel Jones/Jacob "Jake" Stone
Comments: 2
Kudos: 88





	open and shut

**Author's Note:**

> based off of [this](https://data.whicdn.com/images/188160306/original.jpg) tumblr post

Stone wasn't surprised, this argument had been building for months.

Ezekiel had been drawing away from him more and more, showing up late at night and leaving early morning, avoiding him on missions. If Stone was lucky enough to get a moment along with his boyfriend, Ezekiel was minimal in his response, and conversations fell flat. 

It wasn't that Jacob didn't try and find out what was wrong - he'd asked the thief several times over if he was okay, and that if he wanted to talk, he could. The invitations went unanswered, and nobody else in the Library had noticed him being distant.

Assuming that Ezekiel was just going through the motions, Stone waited, gave him the space he'd been taking anyway.

After a month of sleeping alone, Jacob snapped. Ezekiel was in Jake's apartment, sat on the couch, face in a book whilst Jake cooked dinner. Jacob had asked for his opinion on what movie they were gonna watch while they ate, and when he got a shrug for the fifth consecutive time that night, he couldn't hold back anymore. 

"What the fuck is your problem, Jones?" he asked, slamming the wooden spoon he'd been using to stir pasta sauce down on the kitchen counter. "You've basically been ignorin' me for weeks now, and I've woken up alone more times than the total of all that you've said to me for months. Have I done somethin' to upset you?" 

Ezekiel huffed into his book, not even bothering to look up from his page. 

Bastard. 

"Nothing's my problem, Stone, quit asking. I'm fine, you're fine, everything's fine."

Jacob scoffed. "That's horseshit and you know it - tell me what's going on, Jones. I'm tired of being shut out," 

"Shut out?" Ezekiel retorted, "Trust me, Stone, you haven't been shut out, because there's nothing to shut you out of! So what do you bloody want from me?"

"The truth, Ezekiel! Somethin's goin' on and you're not tellin' me about it!"

The thief fell silent at Jacob's outburst, not meeting his eye. 

"I just want the truth," 

Ezekiel felt his hands clench into fists from where they had laid in his lap, and stood up. He couldn't just sit and simmer - if Jake wanted the truth then he was gonna get it. The _real_ reason Ezekiel never stuck around a relationship for long. 

"Fine, you want the truth? Want me to let you in? Well, here fucking goes. Where would you like me to start, Stone? The absentee father, the neglectful mother? Or how about the sixteen foster homes I got shunted around from age seven to fifteen? Ooh, I know, _maybe_ you'd like to hear how I was homeless for a year! The tragic story of a boy forced into thievery by his circumstances. You want me to open up, Cowboy? Well, you're not the first. Everybody wants a slice of the trauma - to _pet my hair_ and act all sad and _save me from the troubling past I can never escape -_ except it's all a pile of shit! People only care for as long as their charity hard-on sticks around, and then they decide it's too much for them, that I'm too _damaged_ to care for, and then they leave. Say I'm 'too unavailable', 'too unfeeling', and then they FUCK OFF and leave me alone again!

"So go on, Stone, ask the question I KNOW you've been gagging to ask me. It's the one that everyone asks. What do I see when the curtains are drawn? What sort of monsters prowl under my bed - do I sort the skeletons in my closet by name or date? What is _The Great Ezekiel Jones_ afraid of? _"_

Jacob sputtered to try and speak- to tell him that no, that wasn't what he wanted to ask- but Ezekiel hadn't exactly been wrong. He wanted to know what Ezekiel was hiding from, what made him so afraid to be open with people.

"You wanna know? Want me to open up and pour my heart out and be sodding _honest_ with you, Cowboy?" he spat the nickname like it made him sick to say it. Something once full of such affection was now filed into a blade and slammed dead-centre into his chest. "You think I get spooked by spiders? Heights? You think I brick it at thunder and lightning because it reminds me of how I spent my _entire childhood_ alone and afraid with no mummy or daddy to protect me from the big bad world? Don't be a fucking idiot, Stone.

"No one I love gets to know what I'm fucking terrified of because I don't know how I'm supposed to look _them_ \- the person I have given _every shred of myself_ to- in the eye and tell them that my biggest fear came to me at seventeen, not seven. Tell them that when I was homeless and living at a community centre in the arse-crack of Melbourne, too old for the foster system and too unloved for adoption, I overheard a seminar on why relationships fall apart- and found out that the reasons that most people fall out of love are the exact same reasons why they fell in it in the first place. How do I tell someone that what I'm most afraid of is that I'll become ugly to someone who once thought all the stars shone in my eyes?

"I'm difficult to love, Stone, and harder to stick with. So I'm asking... _begging you_ to answer me honestly. If I can't trust someone to ever want me - to ever _love me_ \- enough to stay, then how can I be anything but afraid?"

Jacob couldn't find the words within him to even open his mouth, let alone form a sentence in response. It was all he could do to look Ezekiel in the eye for longer than a second. 

"Well?" Ezekiel asked, expectant of an answer. When he got none, he couldn't help but laugh. One lone, sad _'_ _ha'_ that ripped at his throat and cut the space between them (a metre at best, but what felt like a million miles) to ribbons. "That's what I thought. Get out of my way, Stone. Give me an out, before I fall in love with you irrevocably, and have to face the inevitable crushing reality of you falling out of it with me,"

Jacob couldn't find the words. And he was so angry with himself for it because he had doctorates upon doctorates in words and _not a single one_ _of them was fucking helping._ All he could do was stand, steadfast, between Ezekiel and the door that threatened his leave without hope for a return. 

"Please, Cowboy," Ezekiel whispered, closer now; so close that Jacob could feel the shaky wobble of Ezekiel's breath against the flesh of his neck. Ezekiel's eyes looked straight ahead, unable to look anywhere except the door. "Give me an out. I don't think I would survive being un-loved by you. Not now I know how- how... vibrant it feels. How it feels when you look at me _like that;_ like I'm a painting you're _just_ setting eyes on. When you roll over in your sleep and I can hide my face between your shoulder blades. When you've just come back to bed in the mornings and you smell like cedar and coffee and the colour green. I can't come back from that. Not anymore," 

Tear after tear spilt from Ezekiel's eyes, marring his golden skin with acid tracks and glinting sickeningly pretty in the lamplight. Jacob could see in his eyes just how much the thief didn't want an out. He didn't want this, but he didn't want the alternative either: staying and getting hurt later down the line.

"I can't stay for 'maybe's. I can't just wait around to see how this ends without some sort of idea of how broken I'll be when it does. If you can't promise me, right now, that you will try your _fucking hardest_ to love me - even when I'm being a brat, or when I shut down and don't speak for hours, or when I don't make the bed or leave my dishes in the sink- that you'll kick and you'll scream and you'll grit your teeth and you'll try your _damnedest to_ _stay..._ then you need to let me walk out that door and never look back." 

Ezekiel's grip around his duffel was solid iron by now, his hands white and bloodless at the knuckles. He was trembling, muscles tense, still staring straight ahead and _still not looking Stone in the eye_ like it was his life's mission to avoid it. He glanced at Ezekiel's hands, the prominent veins and tendons in the backs of them, pulled taught against the tan skin there. The hands that had held his own so many times; interlocked their fingers when they made love; weaved together their digits and traced patterns on his palm. The hands that had cooked him dinner and stolen his wallet and then gently handed it back after only a few minutes of teasing. The hands that brushed away his tears and wiped his sweat-soaked hair away from his brow after a particularly bad nightmare. Smooth, uncalloused, nimble- everything his weren't; rough and brawny from years on oil rigs and ranches. Thief's hands. 

_His_ thief's hands. 

Jake made the executive decision to forget trying to find the right words (they would have sounded insincere anyway, he'd never been very good at talking the talk) and instead reached out a hand, placing it gently - oh so gently- atop Ezekiel's. He rubbed his thumb in circles across the bones and joints and ligaments, watching them roll beneath his touch.

"You can put the bag down, Jonesy," he murmured, voice hoarse with tears he refused to let fall. He kept his focus on Ezekiel's hand- not daring to look him in the eye lest he was to break down and start sobbing immediately- still making circles, and took a deep breath in. He steeled himself, taking a moment, and then another, before looking up to Ezekiel's eyes; all honey and whiskey-brown and watery tears. Ezekiel still wasn't looking back, but that was okay.

_"You can put the bag down."_

Ezekiel gave him a gaze flooded with pain, uncertainty, fear - but ultimately so much _love_ that it was almost suffocating. He smiled, and it was somehow untarnished from the tear-tracks on his cheeks, so vibrant that Jacob was almost convinced he'd found a minor sun. 

"I'm a lot of responsibility, Stone."

Jake held out his arms for an embrace that Ezekiel returned with vigour. He threw himself at the historian, wrapping his arms around him and burying his face in Jacob's neck, breathing him in. He smelt like cedar, coffee and vaguely of his laundry detergent - a familiar combination that, to Ezekiel, simply smelt like home. With a sniff, he let out a wobbly laugh - it was light; like the lead weight that had sat in his chest had lifted slightly. 

"Stay with me, Cowboy," Ezekiel murmured, sotto voce, his lips brushing against the stubble on Jake's neck. "I need you to stay," 

Jacob hummed, running his fingers through Ezekiel's hair and tracing patterns on his nape. He pressed a kiss to the thief's temple, nodding once, twice. 

"I'm staying. I promise, Jonesy," 


End file.
